Maharajahs and air forces.

This unlikely title is the product of a weekend trip to London. Sunday was a visit to thew Hendon RAF Museum, and Monday to the Maharajah Exhibition in the V&A Museum. Both were excellent, so do not be put off by anything I say here. My issues are philosophical, about the way we view and value history.

The Maharajah Exhibition first. No expense has been spared, bringing a superb range of artifacts together and linking them with a sober commentary. It is a glittering display of wealth, power and opulence. My question is, why are wealth, power and opulence valued?

The Maharajahs came out of the collapse of the Mughal Empire, with monuments such as the Taj Mahal. Yet they were tyrants and despots. Aurangzeb for example executed Sikh gurus when expanding his empire with military might. Power is won by military action, and power is kept by military action. The exhibition celebrates the careers of these men of power and their repressive regimes. True some of them claimed a philanthropic bent, but only in ways which increased their status and stature. For example, in order to give starving subjects work and income, did the Maharajah build schools, universities and hospitals? or excourage new food production techniques, and new technology? Of course not, they built new palaces in the latest taste. The Maharajahs and their families were grotesque, and their values grotesque, and their excesses of money over sense are celebrated here. Also, the British East India Company pulled strings and were the real power behind these thrones. They can be seen in processions in their top hats and red livery, failing to sit on the floor comfortably. What were the British doing in India? Aside from the usual flannel heard, they were making money and exerting power. Queen Victoria made herself Empress of India to impress her German cousins, but never bothered to go to the investiture. Their presence there was always improper, but the old Maharajahs were not a better answer.

There is another side. The artifacts made by the craftsmen and women who laboured brilliantly to achieve results of fabulous beauty and zero utility. Elsewhere in the V&A is the William Morris gallery: he asserted that all things must at the same time be useful and beautiful. That throws out most of the Maharajah 'stuff' - certainly beautiful, but of no practical purpose but to declare power and status.

The RAF Museum has links to abuse of power, despots and suffering populace. A museum of war materials is always treading a tightrope. I remember visiting a small gallery in Tottenham Court Road in the 1980s celebrating Iraqi munitions. The poison gassings took place at about the same time. The rest the world knows. That RAF Museums (and there are several) celebrate the defeat of tyranny is a bonus. Yet we are on our own knife-edge: are we celebrating killing machines? The bombers such as the Lancaster, B17, Vulcan; the 4000 lb to 12000 bombs that flattened Dresden? Are we celebrating the kills? The bomb tallies on the planes, the aces with their 20, 40, 60 or 80 'victories' (or is it 'victims'?). Presenting a war museum is tricky. In my book, it needs to show that war is ghastly (Hendon manages this well). Also that killing should be no joy (the feelings of people involved is always ambivalent as they have lost friends and want revenge). Looking forward, there should be some thought to oranising the world without aggression, war, despotism, and above all without war crimes.

The Saigon Museum of War Crimes sets the agenda well, and I have written about this before. War causes things to be done on both sides that ought not to be done. The aggressor is in no way exonerated by the fact that it is war, for it is their war. Saigon remembers "the American War" and "the French War". Defenders at least have some moral defence, within the limits of humanity. Our war musuems remember the dead who perished in defence of freedom. And this is right. If the Nazis had won, we would now live in a world without ethnic minorities, without any disabled people, without people or colour, without Jews, and without human rights. Even leaving the morals and human rights to one side, this would be a diminished world, a depleted world - and actually a pointly world. Human civilizations do need a way of policing for good, and war museums need to keep a firm hold of this. The current inclusive practice of remembering the second world war alongside the former enemy is a good tradition, so both sides together can think of the enormity of what happened, and what might have happened.